A fault tolerance infrastructure for high-performance COTS-based computing in dependable space systems

A fundamental solution that allows the use of high-performance, but poorly checked processors in dependable space systems is the use of a generic, hierarchical, fault-tolerant hardware infrastructure (FTI). This FTI is a software-independent innermost defense for an autonomous, fault-tolerant long-life system that may also employ other, especially software-based , fault tolerance techniques. The entire FTI is fault-tolerant and contains no software, thus being immune to malicious software intrusions.